Because of its “dynamic growth” in recent years, the owners of the Renolit Group (D-67547 Worms; www.renolit.de), the heirs of the Müller family, have decided to restructure the company´s organisation. As reported briefly in Plasteurope.com 19, 2002, the present holding company Renolit AG is to be dissolved as of January 1, 2003. The three business divisions will each become independent: Renolit AG (www.renolit-werke.de), RKW AG Rheinische Kunststoffwerke (www.rkw-folien.de) and Kiefel AG (www.kiefel.de). All the companies will remain entirely in family ownership and will be headed by members of the present Board of Management of the holding company. The previous Chairman of the Board, Dieter Dengel, will move to the Supervisory Board of the new Renolit AG.

Renolit is one of the biggest German plastics engineering groups. The expansive family group, which has always been rather reserved with regard to its information policy, only became a public limited company in July 1999 and since then has more than doubled its sales from around EUR 500m to over EUR 1bn. Worldwide, the company employs 5,400 people, and processes 400,000 t/y plastics at about 200 production plants.

Quality films of PVC and PE for furniture, window frames, office organisation and self-adhesive applications are the core competences of the present Renolit Werke GmbH, which operates four sites in Germany (Worms, Frankenthal, Salzgitter, Waldkraiburg) and ten international subsidiary companies in Europe, the USA and South Africa. The Chairman of the Board of the company, which is to be renamed Renolit AG, will be Peter Fleißner, presently the spokesman of the RKW management.

With the acquisition of several plants from BP Plastec for film production, the RKW Group recently expanded its capacity by 80,000 t/y (see Plasteurope.com 8, 2002). With its present annual capacity of nearly 300,000 t/y, RKW is thus now the clear number two on the European market for polyolefin film behind the British giant BPI. The company has a workforce of around 2,300 at its 15 plants in Germany and Europe and has annual sales of some EUR 500m. Dr. Werner Feistkorn, currently head of Kiefel Extrusion GmbH (www.kiefel-extrusion.com), is designated Chairman of the Board of Management of the future joint stock company (AG).

The machine construction division of the Kiefel Group – film extrusion, thermoforming, laminating, joining, welding – claims to deliver over 100 machines a year, which would put sales at somewhere above EUR 80m. The production sites in Germany are in Worms (film extrusion technology) and Freilassing (thermoforming etc.). In addition, there are branches and sites in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and the United States. Peter Avinger is earmarked to become Chairman of the Board of the new Kiefel AG.

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